Happy New Year!

Wow, it’s been a long time and I feel terrible about that.  I’ve gotten quite a few new followers since my last post and y’all are probably wondering why in the world you bothered.  Well, the holidays were rather busy – busier than normal – and I got a new phone and haven’t had access to my old photos that I took of my holiday art and boards.  I think I did share some on Instagram before I got my new phone so if you are an Insta-user, check out tinyartroom there.

So, right before our Winter break, I started all my classes on their Art to Remember projects.  A few grades finished and a few are finishing this week.  All of the projects are turning out great and I have two new Art to Remember projects that I’m trying out this year.

Kindergarten was one of the classes that finished before the break so I was looking around on Pinterest and my favorite art blogs (see the blogroll to the right) to see what I could find for them that would ease us back into the swing of things.  For some of these kids (and me) I feel like it’s a second First Day of school so we need to tiptoe back into it.

I found this awesome project over at this cute little French art blog called Le Petites Têtes de L’Art which Google translated to “Small Heads of Art” so… let’s just stick to stumbling over the French pronunciation.  Anyway – the kids loved making this so much.  At the end of class, I asked them what they liked so much about it.  They all said some version of  “I liked the scribbling” and “I like cutting the paper.” So, basically they liked being given a goal but allowed to go about achieving it how they wanted.  Ahhhh… choice based art.  I promised them we would do more of this.  🙂

For now, check out the results of today’s work:

   
   
   
    
   
 

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Warm and Cool Skies

This was an interesting concept to teach my 2nd graders. We looked at the color wheel. We looked at lots of examples of art that used warm or cool colors. We practiced separating the markers into different piles. We discussed why peach and pink are warm colors. We worked REALLY hard. 

This project took us three or four weeks and required lots of patience but I think at the end of it they learned to really appreciate the effort because of how great the outcome. #lifelessons

   
    
    
    
    
   

Art Journal: Dia de Los Muertos

Fifth graders are going to turn themselves into calaveras for Dia de Los Muertos. We are starting this week so I’ll post pictures when we are finished. Here’s my example, step by step.

After I took my photo with Photobooth, I cropped it in pretty close, edited it to make it much brighter and then printed it out as a 5×7.

Draw on the colorful decorations. They usually include circles or flowers around the eyes and the holes on the nose like a skull.

After gluing my face into my journal, I used painted paper to make flowers to go around my face. Another option would be a black top hat with a flower in it.

The last step is to use a sharpie – I used a metallic gold because my page was a dark brown – and add lots of designs, kind of like zentangles.

Here are some student examples. I love how they are turning out. Some of them are also learning the valuable lesson of *less is more*.

Folk Art Farm Quilt

First grade has been working on some farm pictures and they turned out beautifully! We drew the horizon line and then added the barn. Then we drew the “quilt”, remembering not to get carried away and draw TOO many lines or we would be coloring the squares forever. Then we colored everything with markers except the sky (we used a crayon for that.) Last, we used a black marker to add the lines and patterns to represent the crops. Fantastic job, kiddos!

Giraffe’s Can’t Dance!

I love this book and it’s message and was so pleased to find an art project that someone had created to go along with the book. The kids enjoyed the story and it gave us a chance to integrate some ELA points about illustrator and author and fiction. Here is my example, step by step. I will share the kids’ work when they are complete!

These are the Kinder-giraffes! They did so good!

Someone added some nice jungle plants to compliment our giraffes! 🙂

Whoa, Nelly!

Why do I feel like it should still be December 27th? Is time really speeding up? I know I’m not the only one who feels this way as I had a 5th grader tell me yesterday that he couldn’t believe how fast 2011 went by and that it was already 2012. It’s always good to have your life observations confirmed by a 5th grader, ha! Another thing I realized is that I have totally slacked on the blog posts! I should have gotten caught up on this over the break but chose to lay on the couch, reading books and eating cheese and grapes like I am Socrates or something. Whatever, I enjoyed it. BUT, we are back to work and my days as a lazy philosopher are over. It’s time to suck it up and get on top of some posts. I have lots of pictures and ideas to share so I will *hopefully* be publishing lots of posts in the next few days.

To start off the Posting Extravaganza of 2012, I will share some artwork that my 5th and 2nd graders did. 2nd grade discussed how to show people in motion and since it is January and you have all of that resolution stuff going on (and I’m a runner) I decided to show them some Jacob Lawrence Olympic artwork as well as some other “runner art.” I put up a couple different photos of runners from different angles and had them pick one to draw. Here are a couple of cute ones.

The 5th graders did some “Fast, Fancy Feet” and had the joy of taking off their socks and shoes to trace their feet. I asked them to use color to show energy and life and movement in a still object. I really liked some of their results!